I stored my farts in a plastic bag once and lit it on fire, but I don't think I would pass EPA standards as an alternative fuel...

But I was wondering...I saw on Mythbusters they made a diesel car run on nothing but plain ol' filtered used cooking oil. Anyone know what the long-term effects of doing that are on an engine?

I'm thinking about buying a new van (either for PI stuff, or PLumber/Electrician), and if it will run on used cooking oil for 5 cents a gallon, I'd rather do that than 3 bucks plus (FUCK BIG OIL).
Anyone know if just filtering oil will work for a long-term solution?

Cooking oil cannot just be dumped into a diesel tank and run...it needs a cleanin' and I don't think bubbling cabbages and bacon will do the right cleaning...

If I remember right, a diesel engine will run on just about any low viscosity oil such as cooking oils and diesel oil. There is a range - but I don't know what it is without serious time (that I don't have) to research it

You may get away with running the cooking oil thru some filter system rather than distillation efforts.

Yes Bino, that is possible. However, Wenc is correct in that you need to clean (or you can call it "refine") the oil to be usable. I don't know the details. Then you also need to slightly modify the vehicle that you want to use it in, mostly involving the fuel system (duh) such as flexible fuel lines that need to be made out of a certain material (silicone?) to withstand certain properties of the oil that normal diesel fuel doesn't have. There was an episode of Dirty Jobs where Mike rode along with a guy who volunteers his time to clean out restaurants' old oil in exchange for keeping said oil. They went through the whole process from start to finish, it was pretty cool.

it can be a time consuming effort for some people , unless your into tinkering like alot of these people are.

On the plus side , its damn freakin cheap!. One of the problems I understand you have to be careful of is cold weather ( not that you will need to worry Bino =P ) in that of course , the cooking oil will gel up. Some people I understand have dual tanks , to switch to deisel fuel before shutting the engine off , so its regular deasel in the lines when the engine is off.

While Bino may hijack to diesel alternative, it's only because he has gassed people with farts approaching that of fusion temperatures (according to some of his explodiations)

BTW: This fusion process uses Boron and produces very very few neutrons and He3. Anyone with a modicum of fusion knowdge will figure out that this is perfecto: No neutron poisoning hampering fusion efforts or containment and Helium gas as a byproduct.

You cannot get any greener than that (unless you swam in a tub of green paint, green grass, chorophyll and clovers)

sowwy , dont know much about fusion , know something about biodeisel since its currently in use and proven to work. I think one person wrote into popular science/mechanics and basically runs his farm on it , costing him an estimated 35 cents a gallon all said and done ( ingredients and time )

aye, sorry to hijack the post. I was just curious about the diesel french fry oil thing.

I read if you hook up a 2 liter of water, and put some electric wires intthere it'll make hydrogen which you can harvest and pump into a car engine to make it burn. But I dun think it 'd work over the long term.

Personally, I'm for nuclear cars, that'd be sweet, talk about clean burnin cars (just not sure if you'd end up glowing green)

Electrolysis of water costs more energy that you can obtain by burning the hydrogen. Nothing with a net loss in energy can be utilized as a substitute to oil.

Nuclear cars are not feasible. Too many automotive accidents every year.

I don't see fusion as a feasonable (at this time) method of energy production. The reason it works for a star is that the star can harness the effects of gravity to achieve the required temperatures and pressures.

Being that we lack the ability to compress a gas to the amount required for solar fusion, that's out. I haven't heard of this WB-6 before, but it really sounds like a big eco-scam to me.

I've read the papers behind it.
It's real, the focus effect is fairly well known nuclear phenomena. What this unit requires is strong magnetic fields and doesn't require the densities achieved by massive gravity wells or the temperatures required to fuse hydrogen. Most fusion today doesn't even try, what they look for is plasma temperatures.

What's $5 million in research today?

A drop in an ocean of billions and billions. I say: Let's give give enough for the next step, it's stupid to turn him down when they're claiming it may work.
From all appearances, it may well have. Let him prove it.

It has been nearly two decades since meaningful federal oil shale policy initiatives were undertaken. In that time technology has advanced, global economic, political, and market conditions have changed, and the regulatory landscape has matured. As America considers its homeland security posture, including its desired access to diverse, secure and abundant sources of liquid fuels, it is both necessary and prudent to reconsider the potential of oil shale in the nation's energy and natural resource portfolio

It has been nearly two decades since meaningful federal oil shale policy initiatives were undertaken. In that time technology has advanced, global economic, political, and market conditions have changed, and the regulatory landscape has matured. As America considers its homeland security posture, including its desired access to diverse, secure and abundant sources of liquid fuels, it is both necessary and prudent to reconsider the potential of oil shale in the nation's energy and natural resource portfolio

.

I spent a couple of years working closely with the oilsands in northern Alberta. I actually have a jar of it on my desk as a conversation piece and some containers where I did a seperation experiment myself!

The main problem with oil sands is that rather than just drilling a hole and installing a pump, you have to mine it then it requires upgrading prior to refining. They have to move 3 tons of material significant distances to produce 1 barrel of oil. All this material movement and particularly the cracking/upgrading (to turn sulperous heavy bitumen into light sweet crude) takes a lot of energy. The haul trucks run on diesel that's produced right on site. The main feedstocks heading north in exchange for the oil flowing south are electricity (from coal plants) and natural gas (for the upgrader/refinery).

So basically right now we have a "somewhat" efficient process of turn natural gas and coal into crude oil. It makes economic sense at $81. The problem is that the amout of CO2 that's produced to make a gallon of gasoline keeps climbing as we move from light sweet crudes to sources like oil sands.

Your oil shale is pretty similar to the oil sands except that the processes required to extract the oil are even more energy intensive. Again, we aren't burning coal or natural gas in our cars, and at current crude prices, hell, if there were oil on the moon it might be worth going there (there aren't any uncooperative local dictators there yet!!!).

They are looking fairly seriously at building a nuclear plant up in oil sands country in Alberta to provide a source of process steam/heat there that is NOT tied to the market values of fossil fuels. The main thing holding them back is that the oil sands developments themselves are consuming all available construction resources in that part of the country like a great black hole. The costs to build something like a nuke plant there right now would be 4-5 times what it would cost some place else.

The oil sands expansion in Alberta has put the joke to our Kyoto Accord commitments. With all the expansion there, there is absofuckingloutly zero chance that Canada will be meeting any rollbacks of CO2 production... or at least as long as we are burning hydrocarbons to make hydrocarbons so that they can be burned as gas.

Let's not forget coal gassification either. The south africans came up with some pretty darned good processes for producing diesel from coal during the aparthied sanctions. They still burn it for 20-30% of their needs. Again, guess what... just producing the fuel produces tons of CO2. Gotta crack those long ass coal hydrocarbons down into diesel sized ones.

If the whole world was running on oilsands/oilshale/coal diesel based fuels, our CO2 production would dwarf our current numbers. For a good time, dial 1-800-globalwarming!

I will try to find the report again, but I believe it was $45 a barrel that made extraction of Shale oil profitable.

Quite possibly so, my only point there was that at $81/barrel it would be profitable to pay mexicans to chew shale and suck the oil out. (smirk!)

The question is, if we are burning fossil fuels to produce fossil fuel in the kinds of ratios required to extract oil from shale, are we doing anybody any favors?

There is a whole lot of places we'll be getting oil from before we start going after $45/barrel cost stuff in earnest. For one thing, it's entirely possible we will see oil back in the $40s again if you folks ever get the Iraq thing sorted out. Fort McMurray (the main city that is where all the oilsands stuff is based out of here in Canada) was an economic disaster the last time Oil dipped under $20/barell. Houses were worthless. The oil companies kept the plants running but there was no new development until prices rose again.

Oil sands cost in the teens to produce/barrel. Perhaps somewhat comparable with the cost of risk in doing business in Africa/Middle East. For $45/barrel you can afford a lot of "police actions".

If we are smart, we leave some of these kind of sources until we have used up the easier stuff and have mostly switched to non fossil based energy sources BUT we still need something to produce plastics and other non-vehicle fuel needs.

When oil prices last touched record highs - actually, after adjusting for inflation we're not there yet, but given the effects of Hurricane Katrina, we probably will be soon - politicians' response was more hype than hope. Oil shale in Colorado! Tar sands in Alberta! OPEC be damned!

Remember the Carter-era Synfuels Corp. debacle? It was a response to the '70s energy shortages, closed down in 1985 after accomplishing essentially nothing at great expense, which is pretty much a description of what usually happens when the government tries to take over something that the private sector can do better. Private actors are, after all, spending their own money.

Since 1981, Shell researchers at the company's division of "unconventional resources" have been spending their own money trying to figure out how to get usable energy out of oil shale. Judging by the presentation the Rocky Mountain News heard this week, they think they've got it.

Shell's method, which it calls "in situ conversion," is simplicity itself in concept but exquisitely ingenious in execution. Terry O'Connor, a vice president for external and regulatory affairs at Shell Exploration and Production, explained how it's done (and they have done it, in several test projects):

Drill shafts into the oil-bearing rock. Drop heaters down the shaft. Cook the rock until the hydrocarbons boil off, the lightest and most desirable first. Collect them.

Please note, you don't have to go looking for oil fields when you're brewing your own.

On one small test plot about 20 feet by 35 feet, on land Shell owns, they started heating the rock in early 2004. "Product" - about one-third natural gas, two-thirds light crude - began to appear in September 2004. They turned the heaters off about a month ago, after harvesting about 1,500 barrels of oil.

While we were trying to do the math, O'Connor told us the answers. Upwards of a million barrels an acre, a billion barrels a square mile. And the oil shale formation in the Green River Basin, most of which is in Colorado, covers more than a thousand square miles - the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world.

Wow.

They don't need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it's a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.

And we've hardly gotten to the really ingenious part yet. While the rock is cooking, at about 650 or 750 degrees Fahrenheit, how do you keep the hydrocarbons from contaminating ground water? Why, you build an ice wall around the whole thing. As O'Connor said, it's counterintuitive.

But ice is impermeable to water. So around the perimeter of the productive site, you drill lots more shafts, only 8 to 12 feet apart, put in piping, and pump refrigerants through it. The water in the ground around the shafts freezes, and eventually forms a 20- to 30-foot ice barrier around the site.

Next you take the water out of the ground inside the ice wall, turn up the heat, and then sit back and harvest the oil until it stops coming in useful quantities. When production drops, it falls off rather quickly.

That's an advantage over ordinary wells, which very gradually get less productive as they age.

Then you pump the water back in. (Well, not necessarily the same water, which has moved on to other uses.) It's hot down there so the water flashes into steam, picking up loose chemicals in the process. Collect the steam, strip the gunk out of it, repeat until the water comes out clean. Then you can turn off the heaters and the chillers and move on to the next plot (even saving one or two of the sides of the ice wall, if you want to be thrifty about it).

Most of the best territory for this astonishing process is on land under the control of the Bureau of Land Management. Shell has applied for a research and development lease on 160 acres of BLM land, which could be approved by February. That project would be on a large enough scale so design of a commercial facility could begin.

The 2005 energy bill altered some provisions of the 1920 Minerals Leasing Act that were a deterrent to large-scale development, and also laid out a 30-month timetable for establishing federal regulations governing commercial leasing.

Shell has been deliberately low-key about their R&D, wanting to avoid the hype, and the disappointment, that surrounded the last oil-shale boom. But O'Connor said the results have been sufficiently encouraging they are gradually getting more open. Starting next week, they will be holding public hearings in northwest Colorado.

Relating to Potential Development of U.S. Oil Shale Resources April 12, 2005 Good morning Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: My name is Stephen Mut. I am CEO of the Shell Unconventional Resources unit of Shell Exploration and Production Company. I am delighted to appear before you today to describe Shellâ€™s initiative to develop and advance, hopefully to commercial success, a unique and innovative technology which we are increasingly optimistic can open up the vast oil shale resources in the Western United States. This technology, once thoroughly proven technically, will allow Shell to produce clean transportation fuels such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel as well as clean burning natural gas from oil shale in an economically viable and very environmentally sensitive fashion. Because the oil shale resource in the United States is extensive, this technology holds promise for significantly increasing U.S. domestic energy production.

For decades, energy companies have been trying, without success, to unlock the large domestic oil shale resources of northwestern Colorado, eastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming. Oil shale can be found in large parts of the Green River Basin and is over 1,000 feet thick in many areas. According to DOE estimates, the Basin contains approximately 1 trillion recoverable barrels of hydrocarbons locked up in the shale. It is easy to see why there have been so many attempts to unlock this potentially enormous resource in the past.

Some 23 years ago, Shell commenced laboratory and field research on a promising in ground conversion and recovery process. This technology is called the In-situ Conversion Process, or ICP. In 1996, Shell successfully carried out its first small field-test on its privately owned Mahogany property in Rio Blanco County, Colorado some 200 miles west Denver. Since then, Shell has carried out four additional related field tests at nearby sites. The most recent test was carried out over the past several months and has produced in excess of 1,200 barrels of light oil plus associated gas from a very small test plot using the ICP technology. We are pleased with these results not only because oil and gas was produced, but also because it was produced in quantity, quality and on schedule as predicted by our computer modeling. With this successful test, Shell is now ready to begin work on the final tests that will be required to prove the technology to the point where there is sufficient certainty so as to make a decision to proceed to commercial development.

Most of the petroleum products we consume today are derived from conventional oil fields that produce oil and gas that have been naturally matured in the subsurface by being subjected to heat and pressure over very long periods of time. In general terms, the In-situ Conversion Process (ICP) accelerates this natural process of oil and gas maturation by literally tens of millions of years. This is accomplished by slow sub-surface heating of petroleum source rock containing kerogen, the precursor to oil and gas. This acceleration of natural processes is achieved by drilling holes into the resource, inserting electric resistance heaters into those heater holes and heating the subsurface to around 650F over a 3 to 4 year period.

During this time, very dense oil and gas is expelled from the kerogen and undergoes a series of changes. These changes include the shearing of lighter components from the dense carbon compounds, concentration of available hydrogen into these lighter compounds, and changing of phase of those lighter more hydrogen rich compounds from liquid to gas. In gaseous phase, these lighter fractions are now far more mobile and can move in the subsurface through existing or induced fractures to conventional producing wells from which they are brought to the surface. The process results in the production of about 65 to 70% of the original â€œcarbonâ€

That's why gasoline was originally chosen for cars, because it was cheap. Gasoline was essentially an unused distillate of oil (the kerosone and the lubricants were the primary cash distillates).

As demand for used cooking oil goes up, so will the price. Basic supply and demand. Pulling out my crystal ball, I doubt that the price for refined biodiesel will end up higher than the price of gasoline, and would probably be cheaper, since it isn't as flexible as gasoline or diesel (and also doesn't have as many joules per gallon). The good thing is that as demand for it goes up, someone is going to invest the money into making it more convenient for people to use by buying it from restaraunts, cleaning and refining it, and selling the finished biodiesel to consumers.

As far as the H+B->He3 fusion process linked above, if the white papers are accurate, they are getting a net gain in energy, which is new for fusion. Before, the magnetic containment fields required more energy than could be harvested from the reaction.

My favorite part is:

Design studies of IEF-based space propulsion...show that this can yield engine systems whose thrust/mass ratio is 1000x higher for any given specific impulse...than any other advanced propulsion means, with consequent 100x reduction in costs of spaceflight.

Somehow I doubt we are going to see a Bussard ramjet ala Niven anytime soon, but thrust/mass ratio is the end all/be all of space propulsion.

Rapeseed and maize biodiesels were calculated to produce up to 70 per cent and 50 per cent more greenhouse gases respectively than fossil fuels. The concerns were raised over the levels of emissions of nitrous oxide, which is 296 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Something like the Tesla Roadster isn't realistic. It's a case of engineering spin.

For example:

Tesla does not have a working production model of their vehicle, despite presale numbers of 300+.

You may be able to get 0-60 times of 4 seconds, but that's because an electric motor is very torquey. However, the higher the torque, the higher the electricity consumption. So, don't expect to see that 200 mile range if you ever drive it anyway other than shooting for the hypermile.

The mpg equivalents given by Tesla are based on certain assumptions about energy efficiency and usage. These assumptions are not balanced, as Tesla includes the energy usage in delivery gasoline to the gas station as part of their equation, but doesn't look at the energy required to establish the much more complicated electricity network in place.

The majority of electricity in the USA is generated by burning fossil fuels. So, you're not getting rid of the root problem, just transfering it away from automobiles (who are the bad guys, according to just about everyone).

It's a 100k+ vehicle. It costs more than my house.

If you REALLY want to look at improving energy efficiency, the best place to do so is at your home or office. You will end up burning more gallons of fuel from your electricity usage at these locations (including heating/cooling) than you will driving your car (assuming average consumption values).

One of the best two technologies I have seen to reduce energy consumption in a meaningful manner is CCHP systems (Combined Cooling Heating and Power) which is essentially a generator and a system that utilizes the waste heat to drive your cooling/heating loads. This brings up your typical power plant's energy efficiency from 30-35% up to a whopping 70-80%. And this is basically because you've reduced the amount of heat energy wasted.

CCHP is also a local system. A few years ago when there was a big blackout in New York, the only hotel with electricity was one that used a CCHP system, which meant that they didn't have to be tied into the electrical grid.

This system is for smaller scale applications, like buildings or multi-building facilities, not for cities or states. But with it, the facility will be able to generate their own electricty at a cheaper cost per KWH than being on the grid, and will have a greatly reduced heating/cooling bill.

Unfortunately, this system requires alot of pre-planning and won't work as well for older buildings (although it can be adapted). And because it would require actual work on the part of an American to implement, it is being overlooked in favor of finger pointing at the automotive companies.

At a time when the three largest american auto manufacturers are really struggling, congress is continually working to revise CAFE requirements. With our lack of trying to get equitable trade with China and our government killing off our industry, I have to wonder if this country will even be worth anything in the near future.